One analyst has Brent Venables among shortlist of top fresh coaches to run a program

On3’s J.D. PicKell believes Brent Venables to be one of the best head coaches with less than five years experience.

Brent Venables is one of the more experienced coaches in college football. Sure, he only has a couple of seasons of head coaching experience but he’s been coaching at the college level for 30 years.

Sure he hasn’t won a national championship as a head coach, but he has three titles as a defensive coordinator for the Oklahoma Sooners and Clemson Tigers. You’d be hard-pressed to find a coach with as much experience and success as a coordinator as Venables. And over the last two years has shown his prowess as a head coach.

Though 2022, was a disappointment by Oklahoma standards, Venables turned it around quickly in 2023, leading the Sooners to 10 wins. Now it’s about sustaining that success as the Sooners get set to move to the SEC.

And with a new contract extension in hand, the Sooners have their guy for the long haul. J.D. PicKell of On3 believes in Venables as well. On a recent show, picking the Sooners head coach as the guy with less than five years head coaching experience to lead his program.

The thing I love about him. If I bring him in as my head coach… has he won a national championship yet? Not as a head coach. But I tell you what, he’s done it as a coordinator. He knows what it looks like to win at a high level. He knows what a roster’s supposed to look like. He knows what the culture’s supposed to look like. I tell you what, that matters. Being able to have a pretty solid blueprint and be able to tinker with it for yourself, that matters. I think that’s ultimately going to allow for a lot of success for Brent Venables in the long run. – PicKell, On3

Venables spent nearly 30 years learning at the feet of Hall of Fame head coaches Bill Snyder, Bob Stoops, and Dabo Swinney. He was regularly mentioned for head coaching jobs but waited for the right opportunity to come, which was Oklahoma. By the time he took the OU job, Venables had a pretty good feel for the type of program he wanted to build and the culture he wanted to instill.

And PicKell points to the Sooners recruiting success as a reason to believe in what Venables is building.

In a short sample size at Oklahoma, he went from six wins to 10 wins pretty quickly, he has two top 10 classes so far at Oklahoma. He can and will recruit. When you watch Oklahoma players to in how they interact and talk about Brent Venables, guys play for him. Going back to culture, going back to buy-in. I don’t think you can overstate the importance of that.

The Sooners are on a great trajectory with Venables leading the way. One of the best defensive minds in football has the program heading in a direction to compete in the SEC. Signed to a contract extension, Venables has the confidence of the administration and the fan base.

Now, all he needs to do is go win.

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